Australian students who would enter the age bracket 9 to 12 would no longer receive free laptops in 2014. The federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations confirmed on Tuesday the scrapping of the five-year-old programme initiated by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The department explained the stop to budgetary constraints since the federal government had long used up the initial $1 billion allocation for the digital education revolution programme after delivering 967,000 laptops across Australia, meeting the five-year target but doubling the bill to $2.1 billion.

While Mr Rudd said it would be an ongoing initiative, a department spokesperson said, "The DER was only ever intended to be a one-off, short-term program to help bring Australian schools up to standard in terms of ICT resources. We have achieved this, and in many cases, exceeded our targets.

The DER fund is down to its last $242 million expected to be all used up by the end of 2013. While schools will receive the larger $9.8-billion National Plan for School Improvement contained in the David Gonski review of school funding, schools have the power to decide how the allocate the money.

With the larger fund, schools could buy more IT resources such as Smart boards, computers, iPads and tablets that can capitalise on the National Broadband network, the department said.

Ahead of the official end of the free laptop programme, the Australian Education Union SA President Correna Haythorpe disclosed that some Aussie schools have already started to collect $1,300 from parents for their kids' laptops.

"In South Australia, a lot of people really cannot afford the cost of a laptop. This is a real question for the State and Federal Governments - do we end up with a system where some students have a laptop and others won't?" Ms Haythorpe asked.